Trap Out and/or Delaney Out

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Originally Posted by geysir

Saying Austria had little to offer in the 2nd half, is saying we had less than little.

If we performed in an away game like Austria did in the 2nd half, the performance would be rightly applauded and the equaliser seen as deserved.

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I don't remember Austria having many clearcut opportunities until they scored. We defended very well until the deflection. That's what it ultimately required to get their result.

It's amazing that so many people from this part of the world equate good football to keeping possession and creating chances, without recognising that good defending is as important to getting good results. Which is why Ireland have lost just 3 qualifying games in the past 5 years.

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Originally Posted by youngirish

- We also lost to Croatia.
- We had an aggregate score of 9 goals against and 1 for in all games.
- We were massively outplayed by everyone we encountered.
- We were by far the poorest team in the compettition.
- We let Paul Green come onto the pitch in Irish colours in front of a television audience of several hundred million people.

Other than that we had a good tournament. Therefore the double quotes are entirely justified.

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It was very important for you to repeat the goal difference of the weakest of the bottom seeds in the strongest group. Two thirds of which came against the finalists that despite our performances, nobody else with much better players than Paul Green available, got past either.

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Originally Posted by mypost

I don't remember Austria having many clearcut opportunities until they scored. We defended very well until the deflection. That's what it ultimately required to get their result.

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You must be forgetting their first goal then.

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It's amazing that so many people from this part of the world equate good football to keeping possession and creating chances, without recognising that good defending is as important to getting good results. Which is why Ireland have lost just 3 qualifying games in the past 5 years.

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Avoiding losses and defending admirably is all well and good (so long as you can do it beyond the 92nd minute and up until the final whistle goes), but throwing away a potential victory that was there to be wrapped up isn't something to celebrate or laud as a good result, all things considered. Accepting the manner by which we attempted to see out the Austria game is indicative of a submissive, defeatist attitude. Have we resigned ourselves to aiming for simply avoiding defeat? There are three points on offer per game; not just the one.

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Originally Posted by DannyInvincible

You must be forgetting their first goal then.

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I think most people did in fairness. All the inquest is into what happened late on, and little else.

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Avoiding losses and defending admirably is all well and good (so long as you can do it beyond the 92nd minute and up until the final whistle goes)

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We usually do these days. It's not long ago since we went 15 months unbeaten, and the defence was setting clean sheet records. There was no credit given for it however.

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throwing away a potential victory that was there to be wrapped up isn't something to celebrate or laud as a good result.

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We tried to see the game out, it's not an unreasonable thing to do. Other Irish coaches have tried it in the past, others will in the future. We would have if the deflection didn't go in. Of course there would have been no credit for getting the three points either, with all the pre-Sweden arguments ready to be whinged about again.

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Have we resigned ourselves to aiming for simply avoiding defeat? There are three points on offer; not just one.

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It's a league campaign decided on what results you get, not what games you win. We are level with the other playoff contenders with 5 games remaining. It's not the time for abandoning the campaign or making knee-jerk decisions.

Passed of the park the first 20-25 mins of the game , followed by looking like lost sheep for the final 20 mins of the game..............................shocking stuff

I don't think Paul Green deserves to be on the receiving end of so much ridicule, and I think that view has largely been accepted here for a while.

wrt Croatia I think we were massively outplayed by Croatia for large parts of the game and at the same time with a decent run of the ball we'd have drawn it!

And btw, Austria were getting progressively closer before they scored. The goal came as no surprise to anyone sitting around me. They fully deserved to equalise. When we needed an injection of momentum from the bench, none came.

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Originally Posted by mypost

It's not long ago since we went 15 months unbeaten, and the defence was setting clean sheet records. There was no credit given for it however.

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There was plenty of credit given for it, but at the same time people like me - and I was still offering support for Trap at the time - warned that it was a false reflection because of bad misses by opponents (e.g., Kenny Miller), a penalty miss in Macedonia and various other chances where we were sloppy and didn't get punished.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

I don't think Paul Green deserves to be on the receiving end of so much ridicule, and I think that view has largely been accepted here for a while.

wrt Croatia I think we were massively outplayed by Croatia for large parts of the game and at the same time with a decent run of the ball we'd have drawn it!

And btw, Austria were getting progressively closer before they scored. The goal came as no surprise to anyone sitting around me. They fully deserved to equalise. When we needed an injection of momentum from the bench, none came.

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Agree with all of the above.


Re the long unbeaten spell....outplayed by macedonia (at home) for large parts of the game, same to be said for the czech rep(friendly) , Bosnia (friendly) , Estonia (away) , slovakia (home) , armenia (home) ,destroyed by russia( away) ....kudos has to be given for getting the results most definitely .......... BUT when you dont learn or take anything away from those games and been outplayed then results like the euros happen, the kazahstan fluke victory , the germany spanking, and throwing away the win against austria ..............utterly shambolic

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Austria were getting progressively closer before they scored. The goal came as no surprise to anyone sitting around me. They fully deserved to equalise. When we needed an injection of momentum from the bench, none came.

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We didn't need momentum, we just needed to see the game out. Austria had no more than half chances at best. So they ran out of options, and took a 20-30 yard deflected potshot with a minute left to stop us. That won't happen every game.

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There was plenty of credit given for it, but at the same time people like me

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There was no credit for it whatsoever, because as your and the post above shows, it was all about how lucky and "outplayed" we were.

Not from me it wasn't. I was saying at the time that it was misleading. How can you give credit to a defence for keeping a clean sheet when a guy hits the bar with a penalty, for example? O'Shea was lucky not to have given another penalty away in the same game too. He was playing like he was drunk. It's like Arsenal getting credit for their resilience against WBA, despite shipping 3 gilt-edged chances in the last 10 minutes! If one of them had gone in it'd have been "same old fragile Arsenal".

also, here's a simple law of physics. If you're going backwards at an increasing rate and you add some forward momentum, you go backwards at a slower rate. The best thing to do to see the game out was to arrest the retreat. Any one of a number of substitutions might have done that. The inactivity and then the subsequent substitution did nothing of the sort.

If the whistle had gone at 2-1 my reaction would have been a mix of delight and relief. I was very anxious in that last ten minutes. It just looked like one of those games where you could tell that a goal was on the cards even if there hadn't been a clear-cut chance to do so. Goals aren't always preceded by clear-cut chances. There's no rule that says you can only score if you have been very close just beforehand. The unfolding of play made it clear we were asking for trouble and we got it.

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Originally Posted by mypost

There was no credit for it whatsoever, because as your and the post above shows, it was all about how lucky and "outplayed" we were.

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Ah would ye give over FFS. Even I changed my tune for a few months and thought we could qualify from our Euro group as a result. Plenty of credit was given, games just continued to be analysed. And as it turned out the people who felt the run to be a bit "Emporers New Clothes"-ish were damn right.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Not from me it wasn't. I was saying at the time that it was misleading. How can you give credit to a defence for keeping a clean sheet when a guy hits the bar with a penalty, for example? O'Shea was lucky not to have given another penalty away in the same game too. He was playing like he was drunk. It's like Arsenal getting credit for their resilience against WBA, despite shipping 3 gilt-edged chances in the last 10 minutes! If one of them had gone in it'd have been "same old fragile Arsenal".

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I dunno about that, maybe in 1-2 matches yes there are elements of luck but to go that many games undefeated deserves credit. Otherwise you can pick holes based on luck in any winning run. When Spain won the World Cup they were 1-0 up vs Honduras when Villa slapped Izaguirre and could easily have been sent off, they were also outplayed for large parts of their final group game vs Chile even after Chile had suffered a very dubious sending off. They held on for a 2-1 win a defeat would have seen them eliminated and even a draw would have seen them finish 2nd and face Brazil. Talking of the Macedonian fluffing the penalty, well you could point to Oscar Cardozo doing the same vs Spain at the World Cup (when the game was 0-0). At the end of the day you can pick out moments in a run of games when luck or inefficient opposition is a factor, but for any team to go on a long unbeaten run is worthy of praise.

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If the whistle had gone at 2-1 my reaction would have been a mix of delight and relief. I was very anxious in that last ten minutes. It just looked like one of those games where you could tell that a goal was on the cards even if there hadn't been a clear-cut chance to do so. Goals aren't always preceded by clear-cut chances. There's no rule that says you can only score if you have been very close just beforehand. The unfolding of play made it clear we were asking for trouble and we got it.

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My reaction would have been the same. But then my reaction was delight and relief when we held on for 1-0 against Italy and 0-0 against Norway in USA 94, when we held onto the 1-0 at home Vs Holland (and Holland that day put us under far more pressure than Austria last month, at one stage Overmars, Kluivert, van Nistelrooy, Hasselbaink and van Hooijdonk were all on the pitch). Even after the play-off in Tehran there was more of a sense of delight and relief rather than admiration at the teams resolve. I agree that a braver substitution might have allowed us to win, but that criticism can be levelled at most Irish national team managers post Charlton (Kerr had the team retreat into a shell away in Switzerland after Morrison scored and also in the Israeli matches, McCarthy took off Keane (for Keith O'Neill) and then took off Marc Kennedy (for an unfit Matt Holland) against Macedonia before the Stavrevski nightmare in Skopje) I wouldnt even bring up Staunton as it would be unfair on him since he obviously didn't have the ability to manage at any level.

Great response, very well crafted and I don't disagree with what you've presented, but: words are words, gut feelings are gut feelings. My gut feeling during the undefeated run and clean sheets was that whilst it told a story of us being a hard team to beat (true) it also flattered us to a degree that was of some concern. I was rabidly against the Indo agenda of it all being down to luck. My gut feeling - worth some attention given I've been avidly following football for 35 years - was that we were the architects of our own downfall against Austria. I don't see Giants Stadium and Austria as being comparable, I'm afraid.

Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to regularly follow my posts here down the years will recall my anger at blowing it away to Israel and playing like gimps in Switzerland. My point was that if we developed a culture of winning narrow away games that that would continue. So to some extent the roots of our lack of clinicism predates Trap. By the same token our inability to win key home games has become a problem that can be very justifiably pointed at Trap. Even under Eoin Hand I felt that we could win any game in Dublin. Now I only feel the same if we're playing a 4th or 5th seed.

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Originally Posted by cfdh_edmundo

I dunno about that, maybe in 1-2 matches yes there are elements of luck but to go that many games undefeated deserves credit. Otherwise you can pick holes based on luck in any winning run. When Spain won the World Cup they were 1-0 up vs Honduras when Villa slapped Izaguirre and could easily have been sent off, they were also outplayed for large parts of their final group game vs Chile even after Chile had suffered a very dubious sending off. They held on for a 2-1 win a defeat would have seen them eliminated and even a draw would have seen them finish 2nd and face Brazil. Talking of the Macedonian fluffing the penalty, well you could point to Oscar Cardozo doing the same vs Spain at the World Cup (when the game was 0-0). At the end of the day you can pick out moments in a run of games when luck or inefficient opposition is a factor, but for any team to go on a long unbeaten run is worthy of praise.

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But to be fair Edmundo I dont think one could argue that Spain were not the best team in that world cup, by a long distance IMHO. Ireland look like muck at the moment, whatever about results against rubbish teams

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Originally Posted by bennocelt

Ireland look like muck at the moment, whatever about results against rubbish teams

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The worst thing for me was that we looked good against Sweden and I really thought we'd turned a corner with new blood, but -largely dowbn to Trap's selections and appraoch to the game - we looked like muck for large parts of the Austria game. Trap just looked like he disregarded the positives of Stockholm.

Loyalty is generally not a bad quality in football supporters. I can totally understand Liverpool fans believing Kenny should have got another season or Arsenal supporters believing that Wenger can build another great Arsenal team. Both are proper football men who have delivered great success to their respective clubs.

However, there is blind loyalty to Trap from some people here and on other sites. Trap is a mercenary plain and simple. He may still want to win and I've no doubt that he would love his managerial swansong to be in Brazil, but how many on here really believe that Trap has given 100% commitment to our national team. He has only started going to games regularly after the 6-1 drubbing at the hands of the Germans. Additionally, his selection of players is frustrating, annoying and laughable all rolled in one. For example, Wilson, Coleman and McCarthy should all be very seasoned internationals by now. All three have really begun to shine for us, but the majority of posters on here have been calling for them for years. In both Coleman and McCarthy, there are signs that both can reach the very top of professional football. Then there is the communication issues. Trap makes Don Givens seem like the Dalai Lama.

Trap's comments after the Austria game were demeaning and insulting to anyone involved or anyone who cares about Irish football. Yes, we aren't a country with the tradition of Germany, but we are a country that has produced many great players and competed at international tournaments. Essentially Trap was saying "We are Ireland, a mediocre nation. We don't deserve to expect to be able to compete at the top level. What do you expect me to do?" Hardly inspiring stuff from him and I'm sure it would have been heard loud and clear by the players. The thing is we have alot of quality players in that team, many of them young. We have it in our locker to be better than an average mediocre side.

Anyhow, I can't understand the loyalty to a mercenary like Trap. Maybe, I just expect more from Irish footballers and think that they and the football public deserve better than this regime.

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Originally Posted by bennocelt

But to be fair Edmundo I dont think one could argue that Spain were not the best team in that world cup, by a long distance IMHO. Ireland look like muck at the moment, whatever about results against rubbish teams

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Yeah, but my point was any unbeaten run of many games deserves credit and it's a bit harsh to pick holes in our run under Trap since you could pick similar holes in any similar run. I used Spain at the World Cup as an example since they were probably the best team in the tournament and they won it, yet you can pick out matches (or sections of matches) within their run to the final where they were lucky or the opposition messed up. Spain are obviously a better team than us, but if holes are picked in our unbeaten run then holes can be picked in Spain's run, or any team's run for that matter.

I agree that we are not as dominant at home as I would like under Trap, but his remit is to get us into the top two of our qualification groups (which is normally at least a play-off place) so far he's done this (2010 and 2012) and we are still in with a reasonable (but not great) chance of this now. We've dropped points at home to Germany and Austria, the former was if we're honest expected and hopefully on its own wont impact us that much, Austria have lost home to Germany and there is a good chance Sweden will. The 2-2 was dissapointing, but on the other hand we're "up" on points compared to Austria vis-a-vis Kazakhstan (they drew in Astana). There is still a lot to play for and I wouldnt write off our chances of second just yet, although we cannot afford a defeat against either of them now and will probably need 4 points from the double header in September. Can we get anyone else in who could give us more of a chance now in the remaining 4 games? I dont see anyone realistically. Trap will be gone by July 2014 at the very latest, irrespective of if we make it to the WC or not. The new manager will start afresh for France 2014, 23 teams can qualify (France are the 24th) so if you put that into these qualifiers it would mean 1st and 2nd place getting to the Euros automatically and also the best 3rd place, with the other eight 3rd having a playoff. In every qualification in the modern era we've finished at least 3rd (except under Kerr for WC 2006) so any new manager should be able to do that at the bare minimum.

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Originally Posted by Bungle

Loyalty is generally not a bad quality in football supporters. I can totally understand Liverpool fans believing Kenny should have got another season or Arsenal supporters believing that Wenger can build another great Arsenal team. Both are proper football men who have delivered great success to their respective clubs.

However, there is blind loyalty to Trap from some people here and on other sites. Trap is a mercenary plain and simple. He may still want to win and I've no doubt that he would love his managerial swansong to be in Brazil, but how many on here really believe that Trap has given 100% commitment to our national team. He has only started going to games regularly after the 6-1 drubbing at the hands of the Germans. Additionally, his selection of players is frustrating, annoying and laughable all rolled in one. For example, Wilson, Coleman and McCarthy should all be very seasoned internationals by now. All three have really begun to shine for us, but the majority of posters on here have been calling for them for years. In both Coleman and McCarthy, there are signs that both can reach the very top of professional football. Then there is the communication issues. Trap makes Don Givens seem like the Dalai Lama.

Trap's comments after the Austria game were demeaning and insulting to anyone involved or anyone who cares about Irish football. Yes, we aren't a country with the tradition of Germany, but we are a country that has produced many great players and competed at international tournaments. Essentially Trap was saying "We are Ireland, a mediocre nation. We don't deserve to expect to be able to compete at the top level. What do you expect me to do?" Hardly inspiring stuff from him and I'm sure it would have been heard loud and clear by the players. The thing is we have alot of quality players in that team, many of them young. We have it in our locker to be better than an average mediocre side.

Anyhow, I can't understand the loyalty to a mercenary like Trap. Maybe, I just expect more from Irish footballers and think that they and the football public deserve better than this regime.

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We have a lot of quality players in the team you say. This is the usual case of most supporters who want to get rid of a manager:
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We have one player (Coleman) playing in a top 8 team. We have one player (Long) playing in a team not in the relegation zone. Off the top of my head all the other players are playing in mediocre sides battling against relegation or in the Championship. McCarthy may or may not be snapped up by one of the bigger clubs. We heard that often about Kevin Doyle. Our top scorer is collecting his pension in the USA. By the standard of the Premiership, most of our players are mediocre.

With some pretty average Premiership or worse players we have qualified for one tournament and just failed to qualify for another. We have done better than can be expected under Trap.

As for the mercenary jibe, we all get paid to do a job. Professional footballers all get paid by clubs to do a job and then move on to other clubs and get paid by them. Does this make them a mercenary? Many international sides pay foreign managers. Anyone who saw his reaction when Austria scored would realise that his is not motivated solely by the money.

It's not loyalty to Trap. It's an appreciation of what he has achieved with the team. I do not believe there is any other manager who could have brought us to 2.5 campaigns unbeaten away from home. There are, however, many who may have brought us a better home record. His comment about us not being Germany simply put is that some people's expectations are way too high. We see it in many clubs where managers get the sack because a club is only mid-table and next thing they are relegated. His task is to get us to a play off and he has never said that is beyond his expectations.

Do you think he's getting the most out of the players he has available right now? I don't. I really don't, and that's what irks me most.

18 months ago I'd have said yes and I was prepared to overlook some aspects of his management that I didn't like and I went out of my way to support him in face of certain criticism. I find it much harder to support him now. Like Jack Charlton, he was the right man at a certain time but I think that time has now passed. There is quite a striking parallel between Trap and Declan Kidney in a many ways. In fairness, he probably deserves to be given the chance to see out this campaign but I think a change is needed beyond 2014.

I don't think he's a mercenary by the way. I do think he can work harder than he has done though, and clearly the FAI felt so too. I actually think he's a very charming and likeable character and I have no personall ill-feeling towards him at all.

I think the players are probably only playing at 70-80% of their collective ability, compared to Charlton where the team were playing at 100%, indeed you might say the team played greater than the sum of its parts under Jack. I dont think that Trap is getting that extra 30% out but I'm not sure any manager could. International football is so different to the way it was in the 1990s, you can read the books by Cascarino and hear what Townsend and Quinn have to say about that time and there was a real camaraderie that probably isnt possible in the modern game - you cant really go for a drink with the fans after a game and everything is a bit more serious. I dont see how international squads can be as cohesive as club squads given the way the club game has dwarfed the national teams, this wasnt the case 20 odd years ago. There are between 6 and 10 international breaks and it's nothing like the same as training and playing with the same players week-in week-out, if you're a team like Spain or perhaps Germany and a lot of the players come from the same club(s) perhaps its easier for the national team.

Also the team is very much in transition - Given and Duff have left us and Dunne may well have too, with Robbie Keane probably not far off either (and probably not able to do 90 mins). Even less stellar (but still important) players like Kilbane have had to go, and it's left a hole in terms of both quality and experience. There are some promising young players (Coleman, McClean, McCarthy, Brady) but the players in the late 20s/early30, the ones who could really be leaders on the pitch, have been having a bad few years. Kelly and St. Ledger havent really settled at any clubs for that long, O'Shea is a reasonable player but he never really developed into the great player he seemed destined to be 10-12 years ago, Whelan and Green are possibly only in the team (and perhaps even squad) because we are lacking talented alternatives in those positions and Doyle is not really in the form he was a few years ago. It's an awkward time because the younger players perhaps dont quite have the experience to fill the gaps left by the older players.

Coleman and McCarthy are two of the best young players in the premier league. In my opinion, McCarthy will be playing for a top 5 club within the next 12 months. From watching the premiership; Long and Hoolahan would be for me very good players. Neither are top 5 premier league team level players, but both very good nevertheless. Stoke are in freefall, but over the last few years, they have been a very solid premiership team. Wilson never got a look in until recently, despite playing far better than Stephen Ward. Walters has shown he is a good player and certainly international class...if you can bully very good premiership players on a regular basis, then you are international level for me. O'Shea has top level experience even if he has regularly been poor for us. Nevertheless, a good player to have in a squad. McClean is a raw talent. He hasn't kicked on from last year, but you can see glimpses of a very good player, even if he is very predictable.

Prior to his injury, Pilkington was with Hoolahan, Norwich's best player. He looked like a guy who would get a move to a bigger club. Trap never had the chance to play him, to be fair. However, what about Joey O'Brien, who has been very good for the Hammers? Point is, Ireland has good players that have shown that they can compete at a high level and play well on a week to week basis and are more than capable of playing international level. His falling out with players is another concern. While, I can't condone Gibson's behaviour, you can understand the frustration of a player who is an integral part of an Everton side, but is unable to get into the team ahead of Paul Green at the Euros (Yes Green was excellent in Stockholm, but Gibson is a far better player).

Compare our best starting line up with other countries such as Sweden who are countries that regularly compete and do well at international tournaments. Many of their players would play for lower premiership/championship teams, or teams in poorer leagues than the premiership, yet I'm sure the Swedes wouldn't be quick to accept drubbings at the hands of Germany and Spain, as well as being comprehensively outplayed by Croatia and Italy. Okay, Ibra operates on a different levl to any of our players. However, the rest of their starting line up aren't exactly better than anything we have. Maybe one or two would get in ahead of our lads if you amalgamated the teams, but I couldn't pick out anyone that would walk into our team like Ibra.

We are far from perfect. Our goalkeepers are playing with Millwall and is the Sunderland number 2. We lack a top centre half than can dominate top class players. Dunne was able to do this and it may be another campaign (if ever) before Ciaran Clark can do this.

On a personal level, I like Trap. He's a likeable and charming man. I respect what he has achieved in the past. He was an outstanding manager and a great player in his day.

However, I stand by my opinion that he does not give the role 100%. If he did, he would be going to far more games and would surely be able to see that there are better players available for selection that he is picking.